SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2023 09:00AM
  • May/31/23 4:40:00 p.m.
  • Re: Bill 97 

Well, I don’t know if that would happen, but I anticipated the answer would be some kind of provincially owned corporation, the shares of which would be owned by the taxpayers of Ontario and represented by perhaps a minister of the government, who would hold the shares in trust for the taxpayers of the province of Ontario. That’s the answer I was anticipating, but I didn’t get that answer. I didn’t get any answers.

So, I openly invite the NDP to once again explain to this House: What is their agency going to look like and how will it operate? Now I’m going to add a third question: How will that housing agency, proposed by the NDP, raise $125 billion to build the houses they propose? Those are questions that are legitimately asked. I invite them to answer those questions.

Interjection: How will it be staffed? Property expenses—

The question that my colleague put was: How is NDP plan going to do that? Are they going to hire carpenters, framers? Are they going to pour concrete? Where are they going to acquire these resources? Are they going to compete against the Jones Group? Are they going to compete against Nor-Built Construction? Where is the Ontario housing agency, as proposed by the NDP, going to acquire any of this? How are you going to finance your agency? How are you going to raise $125 billion? Those are good questions.

Now the contrast—the contrast and compare, as I spoke about before: What this government is doing is changing legislation to do exactly what I said previously. We’re going to let people like Jones Group, Nor-Built Construction and Valente do what they already know how to do, but they’re going to do it faster and they’re going to do it without taxpayers’ money. They’re going to do it because we’re going to change things like the definition of area of employment. That’s pretty technical. That’s pretty—I don’t know—legal, pretty academic. A lot of people haven’t spoken about that. I’m going to speak about it because it’s in this bill.

So “area of employment”: that’s a definition that’s in the provincial legislation. If your land falls within “area of employment,” that definition, then there’s certain restrictions on it, and it cannot easily be converted into residential land. That’s very hard to do. In fact, in some cases, it may not be converted into residential land.

Let’s imagine—and I don’t have to imagine because I can give you lots of examples in my area of land which is zoned with the definition “area of employment” that is no longer useful for that purpose. It’s either not commercially viable or not industrially viable, and that designation should be removed and a different designation should be put on that land. I would say residential. If you can remove that designation from the land and convert it to residential land, then you can do what you need to do with that land: Give it its highest and best use, which is build residences on that land. That’s how we can get to 1.5 million homes. That’s not the only way, of course, but that’s one of the ways we can get there.

I go back to the proposal by the NDP. Remember, their proposal only wants to build 250,000 homes at $125 billion. That only gets us one sixth of the way to the target 1.5 million.

That is what I have to offer and contribute to this debate today. I have been very specific about two very specific points.

And on that, Madam Speaker, I thank you.

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